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Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Character Design - Week 4

In week 4s character design lesson the first topic was about props and what kind of characters hold what props.For the second and main part of the lesson we were each given a random place, in my case a library, and we had to characterise objects that you would find in that particular space.

There were three or four main objects that I thought of at first. A book (obviously), a lamp a bookcase and a bit later, a filing cabinet.

The first thing I drew was a book, and for this character I thought of it being an old dusty book that sneezes a lot. So the drawing here in the top left corner is the book.I made the spine a big nose and positioned the book opened out. The pages of the book (looking like a moustache) help make the spine look like the nose. I could then imagine that every time it sneezes, it would shoot up and the book would close… and then open again, back to it's original position.

You may see a faint drawing of a computer. That design didn't really go anywhere.

Then the book case. Again I didn't have many ideas other than that the books could be like teeth, but then I thought about filing cabinet. Probably far more simple in design, but I could easily picture some sort of grumpy filing cabinet where one of the draws was part of his mouth. At this point Justin was helping me to get some ideas down. His drawings have been colourised red, while mine remain blue.

The other character was the lamp. This was actually something that I borrowed from one of my other projects. Anyone remember the snoring lamp in 'A Standard to Uphold' Animation. However I came up with the idea that the lamp shade could be his mouth and that he is yawning. Justin again helped to get a good shape for the yawn.

We tried to take the book further, and experimented with a bookmark as a tongue, but then decided that it was best kept as it is.

This is the last page of stuff I drew. The thing which may look like a toilet is meant to be a computer chair. Not a very successful drawing!

That's it for now. We also discussed more ideas about my own three characters. I think it's pretty much decided that the villain is going to be based on Medusa and the sidekick is going to be like an animal, or half animal half human. You know that in Mulan you have the little dragon Mushu. Maybe a character that's something like that. Not that he's half human... he isn't, but anyway.

At this point I'm quite desperate to get some good ideas/drawings of my characters, so I have something to show on Monday that is useful.